Ah, don’t you just love it when you’re waiting to turn right at a junction, and a motorist chooses to cut the corner, ploughing straight into you, and then, five years later, some so-called ‘media personality’ shares it on Twitter and asks “whose mistake was this”?
> Mechanic escapes driving ban after cutting corner straight into cyclist
That’s the unfortunate internet fate that has befallen poor Michael Rammell, who was struck by a BMW driver while out cycling in Berkshire back in March 2019, luckily only suffering some “bumps, scrapes, and bruises”.
Rammell revealed at the time that he had been bombarded by anti-cycling trolls after sharing footage of the collision, describing it as “quite chilling just how many people have no regard for road safety”.
Well, as they say, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, and almost exactly five years after the collision, it’s doing the rounds again, having been viewed a whopping 20 million times since Oli London posted it on Twitter on Saturday, alongside the caption: “Whose mistake was this, the driver or the cyclist?”
Let’s just say some of the replies are… predictable.
“Cyclist. He was supposed to stay single file in his lane,” wrote Robert.
“Cyclists do this to themselves—they think they’re invulnerable to the 2000 pound very fast machines around them, and they want to use the same space as those machines. Their collective sense of entitlement is infuriating,” added another user, perhaps forgetting to note that the motorist in the clip in question certainly felt ‘entitled’ to use the wrong lane while taking a corner.
“I’ll go ahead and piss everybody off by saying 50/50. The cyclist is fault because he was in the middle of the road, rather than the middle of the lane or the outside edge. The car is at fault because they cut the turn too close and entered the wrong lane,” said the diplomatic, but still very wrong, TX Dodge Dude.
Thankfully, others had some sense (a rare commodity on social media these days, mind you).
“How is this even a question? Cyclist never leaves his lane, driver cuts the corner,” noted Glenn, helpfully.
“It’s very clear driver was on wrong side of road,” said the very observant Leilani.
“Car clearly goes into the other lane. Car is in the wrong, all day long,” added Matthew.
Alright, that’s enough of that ‘debate’…
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I cycled to and from work in London for 48 years, starting from 1958 - I can tell you from experience that we had huge traffic jams in London a long time before bus /cycle lanes and LTNs. The only way to reduce the traffic jams in London is to reduce the amount of traffic considerably - motorways and motorway-type roads that lead into London have made the traffic jams a lot worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/13/lost-leg-after-bein...
Re: the cutting of corner video....
I've said it before and i'll keep saying it but its STUPID in the extreme that we only have to take our test once, unless we do something stupid and get a ban with a retest.... not very likely given how few Police there are on the streets now.
Its time for a re-test every five years. I have to prove I still have the skills to do my job every year and all I do is push paper" from one inbox to another!
Wouldn't more enforcement be better? Eg what will happen to this driver? A test just proves you can pay attention for 45 minutes, after which a lot of people will drive completely differently.
Absolutely.
I don't care how someone drove during a test - I care how they drive around me. Due to the lack of traffic police and the lackluster treatment of dangerous drivers by both the police and the courts, most drivers think they can just drive as selfishly as they want.
You can't blame the BMW driver for cutting the corner, he'd just read online how dangerous ebike batteries are and was rushing home to check his ebike riding neighbour hadn't burnt down his house.
I think yet again it's "both".
Repeat testing does have benefits:
Agree that more enforcement is also vital. If there's very little chance of getting nicked we know that substantial fractions of people will "bend the rules" (break the law). Far more than 50% for some speed limits and likely nearly everyone for driving on the footway.
I think the problem is things like this are seen as 'bad, but not that bad'. The chances of getting caught for texting, running lights, not paying attention etc are low and the fines or bans are tiny or nonexistent.
'"Cyclist. He was supposed to stay single file in his lane,” wrote Robert.'
It would certainly be worrying if a solitary cyclist were to do anything but stay in single file in his lane. Maybe Robert was very drunk.
Lots of similarities between this article about ski helmets and cycle helmets.
https://www.skimag.com/gear/50-year-stud-on-helmets-and-injury-prevention/
Thanks, interesting, and as you say, the parallels are striking (pun intended).
I'm curious now about why the men had leg injuries and the women had knee injuries
I wondered that too, but concluded that women must have knees other than on their legs: don't ask me where.
They come after their names when married? Mrs Smith, née Jones?
Must be their kidneys
Someone did exactly the same thing to me, cut the corner and smashed into me. Only difference was that I was also in a car (as a front seat passenger)...
In the case of it being car vs car whose fault is it, the car driver or the car driver? It's a super simple question; if the bike were are car, who would be at fault? Clearly it would be the car that drove into the stationary vehicle, there's really no argument.
"Clearly it would be the DRIVER that drove into the stationary vehicle..."
http://rc-rg.com
Another case of "how on earth have all these people got licences" and "holy shit I share the roads with people like this" moment. The mind boggles. I think you could actually remove a large proportion of bad drivers from the roads with an online questionnaire on road safety and fault. Show them clips like this and ask them to rate who is at fault on a scale of 1-10 and see what happens.
And you can bet that a driver like that, if there was no queue of cars looking to exit the junction that the car that hit the cyclist would have turned so early they would have nearly mounted a kerb (if there was one) - Seen it all too often from distracted or impatient drivers. Imagine if Give Way lines had alligator teeth to within 2ft of the centre line - drivers wouldn't cut corners then, would they? ( I know that long or abnormal load vehicles would not have manouvring space at many junctions for this to be viable)
Streatham LTN? pulled out you say, no doesnt ring any bells
wish the parents of the one streatham campaigners had "pulled out"
CycleGaz's own evidence showing the difference made to congestion during school holidays and term time...
Now what is it that is causing traffic gridlock again...?
Oh yes, cyclists and LTNs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57UgWLCfRg
Thanks.
I really enjoyed that for the "traffic jamming". I missed the quiet side and was rivetted to the normal day ride.
Was Lambeth Council a LABOUR council?
I'm sure Flintshire Lad would have let us know in the traditional manner...
I thought I'd better mention it seeing as road.cc, the most left leaning, woke and loosely cycling related politics website omitted to state the fact.
very woke of you
I agree.
Labour is woke? Good one.
Do you know, I've been on the internet for years and years and I'm still not half way through all the websites out there. Keep trying, and I'm sure you'll find one you like.
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